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archival data

The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and the British Astronomical Association Variable Star Section (BAAVSS) are pleased to announce that the variable star observation archive of the BAAVSS is now available through the website of the AAVSO. The BAAVSS archives comprise over 2.5 million variable star observations made mostly by amateur astronomers world-wide over the past 150 years. These data now join the archives of the AAVSO in the AAVSO International Database, which consists of over 25 million variable star observations made by observe

The AAVSO's volunteer-driven project to digitize paper archives of variable star observations is moving forward, and there have been some exciting developments over the past few months that deserve to be mentioned. Here, I'll summarize some of the happenings in this project, and talk about some of the issues that have arisen at AAVSO and among the volunteers.

February 15, 2011: Dr. Colin Aspin (U. Hawaii) has requested archival images and other observations of the FU Orionis variable V1647 Ori and the surrounding field over the previous 10 years in support of a study of this star. Aspin writes that he is hoping to obtain more data with which to create a multi-year light curve of this star to put present-day observations in context of its past behavior.